Meet the Queer Podcasters Making National Parks More Inclusive

Sphraner/Getty

The National Parks, despite efforts to highlight LGBTQ heritage, have long felt like the domain of a homogenous set of travelers. National Park Service efforts to change this image have had mixed results—a number of Pride events in parks have received backlash and even boycotts from those they claim to celebrate. But visibility matters, especially in places long typified as straight, able-bodied, and white—and that’s where folks like Dusty Ballard and Mike Ryan come in.

The two friends, both gay men who work in education in New Jersey, forged a bond over long walks in New York City before taking their adventures further into the wilds of the United States. In 2018 they launched Gaze at the National Parks, a podcast that highlights one hiking trail in one national park per episode, affirming that these are indeed spaces for queer people as well.

Out and proud, and often adorned in some manner of rainbow attire, Ballard and Ryan have come a long way—over six seasons, 258 episodes, and 37 national parks—since their first episode on Yosemite Falls. The hikes they feature span from Hawai'i to North Dakota, showcasing what it’s like for two gay men to trek in national parks, including the games they play on the trails, and important callouts on topics like Confederate monuments and stolen Indigenous lands. In June, they did a series of mini episodes for Pride, focused on queer representation in National Parks. At its heart, the show is an adventurous romp through nature, offering humor, insight, and solidarity along the way.

Ahead of their season six finale on July 22—the next season returns mid-September—we sat down with Ballard and Ryan to hear about their journey, and what’s next.

What inspired Gaze at the National Parks?

Dusty Ballard: Before we started traveling together, a totally organic discovery was our shared love for long walks. We had been friends for a couple years at that point, and it was the first beautiful day in spring in New York City, so we wandered up to Central Park and over to Riverside, and I said, “Wouldn’t it be funny to walk all the way to Battery Park?” So we ended up doing that. We started doing these marathon walks, it would take us all day, and we would finish with dinner somewhere. Then, we started doing that with national parks and trails.

Mike Ryan: We started traveling together in 2016 for the first time, and we took our first national parks trip in 2017. In 2018, we went to Acadia National Park, and that’s where we were like, “Wouldn’t it be fun to start a shared Instagram account?” While on a hike, the name came pretty much immediately: Gaze at the National Parks. We’re all about wordplay.

DB: After we came up with the Instagram account, we thought to try a podcast format and we came up with the format in five minutes: one trail, and what we do on a hike. It figured itself out real fast.

Why is creating this space important to you?

DB: There’s a thriving queer outdoors community, and it’s great for those who know about it, but not everybody does. We felt that community should be reflected in the podcast space, and we wanted to highlight queer-sounding voices. I know I would have been comforted to hear a queer-sounding voice talk about that stuff when I was a kid. The only voices I ever heard were uber-masculine straight-sounding people. We wanted to recreate the experience of talking to two people who just got off a trail.

MR: We’ve also made a point to really highlight and underscore the importance of queer history, and queer people in park spaces. As two gay men who host the show, I don’t feel like it’s a “gay podcast.” It’s an accessible show for everyone, but because of the format and the humor and how we structure everything, there are inferences and points of contact for queer culture and individuality.

Between your main parks episodes, centered on trails, you have Trail Mixes and Pride Mixes, which are one-off episodes with conversational formats. Can you tell me more about those?

MR: Much of the show is education-based, driven by our own curiosity, to talk about things beyond just the trails in the national parks. Some of my favorite episodes are those that relate to science or Pride. It opens up a doorway for a lot of people who may not think about those things.

DB: We knew that we wanted to be weekly, so purely out of hope to gain audience, Trail Mix became a space to dig into something that we didn’t get to cover in our trail episodes. It’s become a space for science, for environmental justice, and for interviews, which has just been the most wonderful thing. It’s also a place where we get to call out things like injustice at monuments in national parks, giving full context for when those Confederate monuments were put up, and why the timing was also an act of racism and injustice.

What else do you wish more travelers saw or knew when in national parks?

MR: Knowing how to appropriately behave, and that it’s not an amusement park. During the last government shutdown, people were leaving trash everywhere. Just because you’re going to enjoy the space doesn’t mean you can’t take care of the place. People assume that there’s a staff to deal with it.

DB: The word park is so associated with capitalism in America. Because of that shared verbiage, I think that there’s an assumption that a park ranger is someone who can make a reservation for you, or someone who can lead you to an accommodation. Being in parks [should be] an act of caregiving whatever that looks like—staying on the trail to not bother vegetation, giving animals space, not touching plant life so we don’t get our hands on it.

What have been some of your favorite National Parks to visit together?

MR: Olympic National Park is always gonna have a special place in my heart. It’s a park that I went to alone [before we started traveling together], and I called Dusty sobbing from a Safeway parking lot saying, “I don’t want to do this by myself anymore.” I got to experience it in a very real and raw way on my own, and we went back together this past summer.

DB: Our favorite genre of trail is one that feels like you go through different realms. Some that really stick out to us are the Sliding Sands Trail in Haleakalā National Park—one part feels like Mars, another part feels like the road to Maleficent’s castle, another part feels like jungle, another part feels like Fern Gully, another part feels like Ireland. Another trail that was like that is the South Rim Trail in Big Bend. You have to go really high up in the Chisos Mountains, but it’s such a wild, beautiful experience.

Which parks do you think are totally underrated?

MR: I think Big Bend is an underrated park. It’s a remote, three-hour or four-hour drive from an airport, but everyone that we talked to was like, “You’ll love it when you get there.”

DB: Capitol Reef gets the least amount of play in Utah, because it isn’t Zion or Bryce, and it’s not close to Moab. It’s right there in the dead center, getting less attention. And every travel book at the time said, “Oh you can skip Capitol Reef.” But then when we got to Capitol Reef, and it was one of the most amazing parks we’ve ever seen.

MR: The East Coast parks are hard. The west is so grandiose, and the east has a lot to live up to, so I’d say a lot of people sleep on Cuyahoga Valley. It’s really beautiful, with plenty to see and lots of trails.

A big part of your podcast is emphasizing Indigenous history and marginalized communities. How can visitors learn more on this front?

MR: Take the time to be mindful and see what the park website has to offer. It’s important to at least have some context, to know what people once were there [and what people continue to have ties to the land]. This is all stolen land. We’re accessing space that we can’t hold claim to, yet we do. Do that homework, and have a little bit of background there.

DB: The research ahead of time is such an important piece, because when you go to a visitor’s center, and there’s an interpretive section, that will inform your questions. There are a number of park spaces where they are working very diligently on collaboration and co-management [with Native American communities], and there are others that have only begun that journey, and others that don’t yet know how to do that. There are a lot of different parks on a lot of different journeys on their own road to co-management [by working with local Native American communities], which is the thing that all of us in favor of returning native lands to native people are in favor of. I know Glacier National Park has a program they do almost every night, and Badlands has a whole section that is co-managed by Indigenous people. It’s about being curious, staying curious, and staying supportive.

What are your plans and goals for the future of the podcast?

DB: We’d love to get to all of the parks.

MR: We’ve been to 41, as of our spring trip.

DB: We’re gonna get to a point where the only ones we haven’t gone to are Alaska, and we’ll get there eventually. Back in the first season, we got a wonderful care package from the head ranger at Gates of the Arctic. We’re hoping to get there at some point. I do know that, as the show continues to grow, we are always curious about more people doing incredible things outside, and how we can sit down and chat with them. We’re doing more interviews this season, and seasons beyond. One idea we’ve thrown around is that we’d like to make a travel game book for national park-goers, for passing time in the park.

MR: I don’t think we had any idea where it would go, and it’s fascinating to see where it’s taken us, and the people we’ve met along the way. A mainstay has been meeting a lot of great people to go to the parks with. We love traveling together, but we’ve also had so many great experiences with other folks that we either just met on the fly, or people that are close friends. So I think sharing that with other people has been more a part of the journey recently, and I hope that continues.

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler

The Latest Stories from Condé Nast Traveler

• Want to be the first to know? Sign up to our newsletters for travel inspiration and tips

• 7 Fiji Villas That Feel Like You're on ‘Love Island’

• The Best Places to Go 2024: 23 Editor-Recommended Hotels

• Your August 2024 Horoscope: Travel Mishaps Are Likely This Month

• Passport Book vs. Card: What's the Difference?